A World of Paper Cranes
by Reinstated
Summary: He spends days in his room folding paper cranes. He knows that at this point it is all that he can do, after all. This is all that he knows how to do.


**A World of Paper Cranes**

**(originally posted as an anonymous fill on the APH kink LiveJournal community)**

Japan does not enjoy sitting still when he is useless.

He tends to walk around his small room in a circle, his feet grazing the mats and his eyes on the floor. The silence of the world is on his shoulders, and he can only prevent himself from screaming as the wounds burn his skin.

No one visits him that night. He is half-saddened and half-joyed.

The war rages on. He does not like his brothers when they are all heated up like this. The world that he knows is falling apart. They ignore him, his brown eyes only staring into the wall of noise and violence.

His skin tingles in the cold. Blood runs down his back and stains the mats. He makes a note to clean it up soon, but he doesn't. He merely lies back - dirtying more of the mat in the process - and closes his eyes. The pain does not go away like it usually does.

He grits his teeth.

Japan's boss clasps his hands together and apologizes. He says that it's all right, that he's fine. He'll be better by tomorrow since he found some new medicine that makes the pain and the scars go away. The boss nods politely and leaves, his smile not in the least convinced, even as he forces himself.

The medicine is a fake, of course. It lies. The wounds are as painful as ever. Japan's blood is screaming, yelling out, crying.

His people are dying.

He spends days in his room folding paper cranes. He knows that at this point it is all that he can do, after all. This is all that he knows how to do.

The soft rustling of the paper is comforting towards his bloodied ears. The scuffles outside are blocked out by his hands smoothing over blocks of color and the light from the nearby lamp reflecting off of the tatami mats.

When he has folded ten he rolls his shoulders and resumes.

The shouts continue outside his door, and his wounds tingle. The cloth of his robe stings his skin.

When he has folded fifty he bows his head down low and curls up into a small ball. The lamplight gives off beautiful light to enrich the colors of paper birds. His robe is hurting him now. The screams are reaching his ears and echoing in his brain.

When he has folded a hundred he resists the urge to smile. His hands are tired and his eyes are hazy.

He falls asleep with the paper crumpled in his hands and the sounds of crying and yelling in his ears.

The next day he wakes and slowly flattens out his crumpled paper. He continues his work - folding more paper cranes - and blocks out the world outside of his room.

His boss comes knocking at the door and he stays silent. The lamplight is buzzing in the corner and the silhouette at the door leaves. Japan continues folding - silently, patiently, hopefully - and the sunlight is gone and his stomach has lost its tempers and growls.

The next day he wakes to find that he has accidentally destroyed five cranes in his sleep. He holds them and cradles them dearly, mourning their loss. The tears are in his eyes but they do not fall. He merely gives his moment of silence.

His body bleeds against the white of his robe, and he feels all sticky. So, he stops his folding and reaches out for a towel, tying it around his torso. It is long and tight, but he likes it that way.

The way his blood mixes with the white is pretty, anyway, and it's stopped. That's good, right?

And Japan continues his folding. The paper cranes stare at him in silence. His back hurts and he pauses to stretch.

When he has eaten (finally, because he is starving and no amount of determination could let him off) he folds his legs, and then folds the papers into tiny little cranes. They sit in neat little rows around him and his feet are going numb from sitting on them for too long.

There are more screams that night, and someone is thrown against his door. He doesn't look up - he is too afraid of what he'll see and what he'll do - and continues creating the little fragile birds. They accompany him day and night, through and through the screams and the pains.

When the voices leave the one thrown against his door cries. He cries and he cries but Japan ignores him, knowing that he cannot do any more. The crying figure finally crumples into a corner, leaving bloodstains on Japan's sliding door.

He wets his lips and stops the tears from spilling onto the paper.

When Japan bleeds again and the towel can't hold it out any longer, he tosses the cloth onto a corner and pulls another one on him. His hands are too pale, he notices, and his chest is constricting. The blood stains the cloth the same, and he thinks that this isn't as pretty.

He folds them faster this time - faster and less beautifully - because he knows he doesn't have much time. The cranes are born so quickly that they are imperfect. His blood boils and his breath hitches in his throat. He stops and buries his face in his lap but resumes soon after.

And then another one comes sobbing at his door, and he ignores him the same. When the body comes crashing down onto the wooden floor, Japan's face is sweaty and his hands are cold.

He lets out a scream and it burns his eyes and his lips. The crane in his hands flies off, disturbing the rows of neat little soldiers.

Japan falls to the ground, his eyes soft and sad, his cranes incomplete.

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><p><strong>All right, so this was one of my anon fills on the APH kink LJ comm.<strong>

**I decided that I liked it enough to edit it and post it here.**

**The topic was _Japan - 1000 Paper Cranes_. I received enough comments early on to make me confident that it wasn't much of a bad idea to put it here.**

**Please review. How's my prose? How does the story flow? What do you think?**

**Thank you for reading.**


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